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Thursday, February 15, 2018

(This is my second post today - please click HERE or scroll down to see a fun post about making Christmas card throughout the year!)

Hello and welcome! Today is an exciting day over at Hero Arts! The new 2018 Catalog products are launching in the Hero Arts store! I'm part of a giant blog hop to celebrate - you should have arrived here from Kelly Latevola's blog (and I'm sure if you did, you are still swooning - can't wait to see what she colored today!). If this is your first stop, go ahead and head back to the Hero Arts blog to start from the beginning!

Today I'm sharing a few of the cards I made for the printed catalog. I had so much fun playing with these products!

For my first card, I created a little scene by combining the Make a Fountain set with the Trellis Fancy Die. First, I stamped the parts of the fountain and colored it with my Copics. The path leading up the fountain was drawn by hand and colored. The little bushes along the path are another new set, Layered Topiary - I stamped them without worrying about lining them up perfectly. When I added the trellis to the card, I only partially adhered it, so the doors can open. Another detail that you can't really see in my photos - I added some of the new Crystal Clear Lacquer Pen to the water of the fountain, to make it look "wet".

The next card was a little bit of a labor of love, but I really do love it! There are several fun new Color Layering sets in this release, which I love. But one thing I especially love is that with most of them, the final layer is an outline image, so you can use that line image for coloring! Here I used the Color Layering Elephant set.

I stamped and masked the elephant several times to create my "herd". To give the gray elephants some variation, I colored them with three different "families" of gray Copics - toners (T1, T3, T5), neutrals (N0, N3, N5) and cools (C1, C3, C5). For my stand out ellie, I went with violets (V04-06). I had to add a little pink (R20) to their cheeks, because that's what I do!

The message I used is from a set called Weird and Wonderful. There are so many great messages in this set - I love all the weirdness!

For my next card, I used another favorite from this release - Support Prayers Love. This stamp set was developed as we were all reeling from the natural disasters that struck last fall - the multiple hurricanes, the fires in California, the earthquake in Mexico. Hero Arts has a long tradition of giving back - it's one of the many reasons I am proud to work with this company. You can learn more about their efforts on their Giving Page. All profits from this stamp set are donated to charity. There are four new Destination woodblock stamps for fundraising as well - Destination Puerto Rico, Destination Napa Valley, Destination Mexico and Destination Florida. They go along with the Destination Texas stamp, which already existed but was designated as a giving stamp last fall.

For the card above, I used a combination of Copic markers and Bold Inks. A great thing about the Bold Inks - they are Copic-friendly, so I can color and not worry about bleeding. The hands are a solid image, so I stamped them in Caramel, using second generation inking, the added E00 Copic coloring right over them. The Earth images in the background were stamped in Moss ink, and then colored with BG11, while the heart-shaped Earth was stamped in Intense Black and colored with G24 and BG13.

And finally, my last card - for this one I played with a GORGEOUS new woodblock stamp called Flowering Nasturtium. I heat embossed it in gold on black cardstock, then colored with my colored pencils. I love the vibrant look you can achieve when doing this! I added a few sequins from the Champagne mix to finish the card. The gold matting was done by painting with Kuretake Gansai Tambi Starry Colors gold paint on Kraft paper. It's so shimmery and pretty in real life. The gold embossed message is also from the Weird and Wonderful set that I used above. The Flowering Nasturtium stamp also has a matching die available, which is super handy!

Alrighty! That was a lot of card info! Now it's time to hop. The hop is both huge and AMAZING - I'm so honored to even be associated with this talented list of stampers! Be sure to visit everyone along the hop and leave comments - Hero Arts will be giving away THREE $50 gift certificates to lucky winners drawn from the blog comments across the hop. You have until Thursday, February 22 at 11:59 pacific to leave those comments!

What a versatile and eclectic set of cards Libby. I love them all and had to go back several times and look at them. Beautifully crafted. the masked elephants has to be my favourite though. I just love the hugeness of the whole thing and the purple elephant made me smile. The nastursiums are pretty awesome too! Thanks so much for sharing.

I really love your cards! That first one with the scene is beautiful and so is the one with flowers on black card stock! Hero Arts had come out with such a variety of new things in this catalog and I can't wait to start getting some of them! Thanks for sharing with us!

I'll not be hopping Libby - lack of time now I am on my own and have to 'do everything', and being summer here that means there';s loads of outside work to, That aside, your cards are stunning!! Love that final one in particular. I made one using embossing on black that I have not blogged yet, but we must have been thinking alike :-)BlessingsMaxine

Wow!! You have been super creative! I love the purple elephant and the fountain card. The fountain card with the gates reminds me of Savannah or Charleston with the old world southern charm. Magnificent!

I love the scene you created with the fountain! That's such a fun use of the dies and perspective; it really looks different from everything else I've seen on the hop. I like your sense of humor with the purple elephant (and that sentiment set might need to jump into my shopping cart soon), and the nasturtiums!! Oh, those are gorgeous. I have got to do more colored pencil coloring on black, because every time I see it, I just want to reach through my screen and pet it. Thank you so much for sharing!

What lovely cards you've created! And I love the array of styles of them. That first card is a beautiful scene and that stone path you drew and coloured is amazing and adds so much to the scene. And your elephant card is simply fabulous!! That sentiment is just perfect. You coloured them beautifully and I agree, all the work you put into it was definitely worth it. And then there's that last card. It is absolutely gorgeous!! I've come to realize that I love the ĺook of coloured pencils, especially on black and kraft paper,àn the detail you can add to any image with them. It amazes me every time. I think I'm going to have to invest in some polychromos pencil crayons for myself. Thanks for the inspiration!